Late Night Snark: Last Weekend of August Already? Edition
Continued...
Preach it, Ru. And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 27, 2021
Note: Cheers and Jeers will be closing briefly at noon tomorrow so we can explode a small-"ish" nuclear device in the kiddie pool with the hope of making the algae go away. If you have errands to do in a neighboring county, that would be a good time to do them. Don’t forget your mask. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
15 days!!!
Weeks 'til the start of the Labor Day Weekend: 1
Days 'til the Hampton Beach Seafood Festival in New Hampshire: 15
Factor by which unvaccinated people are more likely to end up in the hospital with Covid-19 than vaccinated people: 29x
Percent of all eligible people age 12 and older in Maine who, as of Wednesday, had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine: 80%
Percent of Democratic and Republican Floridians, respectively, polled by Quinnipiac University who believe "climate change is going to have a significant negative effect on Florida in my lifetime": 83%, 17%
Support and opposition, respectively, for the Democratic $3.5 trillion New Deal II bill now working its way through Congress, according to Suffolk University/USA Today polling: 52%, 39%
Number of days before an earthquake happens that a snake can sense it from 75 miles away: 5
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More maps at the National Hurricane Center here.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Been awhile since we featured a fresh pic of C&J's rescue lab-mix Haley (who turns 9 in a few months), so here she is cooling off in the wilds of Portland this week…
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JEERS to silly comparisons. Yes, the terrorist attack on the Kabul airport was awful. We haven't seen something like that since it happened every damn day in the half a dozen years immediately following George W. Bush's invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and we were all told to ignore them, go shopping, and slap a bigger "Support The Troops" magnet on the back of our Hummers. So, yeah, sadly we lost some of our remaining troops who are facilitating the largest and most dangerous human airlift in recorded history. But c'mon, NBC News…this is just dumb:
Yeah, thanks, reporter. But there were not more troops killed in Afghanistan yesterday than all of 2002 combined, 2003 combined, 2004 combined, 2005 combined, 2006 combined, 2007 combined, 2008 combined, 2009 combined, 2010 combined, 2011 combined, 2012 combined, 2013 combined, 2014 combined, 2015 combined, 2017 combined, 2018 combined, and 2019 combined. So maybe stop with the stupid, pointless comparisons and go do something more useful. Like shopping?
CHEERS to order in the courts. It brings me no small pleasure to announce that it was a very bad week for the Trump cult. Not only did the House's bipartisan January 6th committee demand a slew of documents related to the attempted coup that could prove to be damning and enlightening in equal measure, but the courts were also busy throwing the book at some of his skuzziest lieutenants. In no particular order…
And in Pennsylvania a lady cultist just got sentenced to a year in prison for yelling in a supermarket that she had Covid and then spitting on produce. Now if we could just nab the previous president for shitting on America.
CHEERS to the Arm-Twister-in-Chief. Happy 113th birthday to #36, Lyndon Baines Johnson. What a schizophrenic presidency—stellar marks for civil rights and the Great Society programs, but total fail for the quagmire in Southeast Asia. In fact, his tumultuous time at the top overshadows his dozen years in the Senate, where his personality and leadership style were encapsulated at the 1958 Gridiron Dinner by fellow Senator John F. Kennedy:
As his press secretary George Reedy wrote: "Of all his qualities...the most important was that he knew how to make our form of government work. That is an art that has been lost since his passing and we are suffering heavily as a result." Sadly, I also don’t think we'll see another president excel like LBJ did at the art of ordering Haggar slacks from the Oval Office with extra room "down where your nuts hang." Time marches on.
CHEERS to bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold...Titusville tea. My, how time flies when you're polluting the planet. 162 years ago today, in 1859, "Colonel" Edwin Drake's newfangled drilling technique (ramming a pipe in the ground so the hole wouldn't clog) paid off when his employee, "Uncle Billy" Smith, struck oil 69 feet down in a spot near Titusville, Pennsylvania. And a few years later solar and wind power completely replaced it as the world's primary energy source and everyone lived happily ever after with tons of sex, booze, fistfuls of thousand-dollar bills, universal health care and — [POOF!!!] — well, that was a fun dream while it lasted.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here are some of the TV highlights for the weekend. Oops, I guess I should've checked first before I wrote that, because there are no TV highlights for the weekend. Well, that's not entirely true, I guess. You can check out the new home videos here at Rotten Tomatoes. The baseball schedule is here and the WNBA schedule is here. The Little League World Series wraps up tomorrow and Sunday afternoon on ABC. If you missed the 60 Minutes report on all the UFOs that keep coming down to try and sell us term life insurance and vacuum cleaners, you can catch an encore Sunday evening. Other than that, we recommend you shut everything off and go find a comfy hammock. Now here's your Sunday morning lineup, such that it is:
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 27, 2011
CHEERS to an appropriate response. Glenn Beck traveled to Jerusalem to thank the Jewish residents there for being so happy to sacrifice themselves during the upcoming Rapture (now definitively scheduled to happen in October, according to that old guy who definitively predicted it would happen last May) so that Christians could be saved. Beck predicted that his "Let's Spend the Shabbat Together" tour would bring out "tens of thousands" of people. Funny thing, though—apparently the Israelis have something called "a life," which doesn’t seem to involve watching a third-rate cable TV doomsayer prance around on stage honking his bamboozle horn. And so, though his estimate will no doubt number in the millions, the inconvenient truth is that Beck bombed again. Not only were the crowds much smaller than predicted, but they were made up, according to the Israeli press, of "mostly American Christians." Why do I bring this up when there are so many real issues threatening our civilization? As a wise man once said: "Uhhh...huhhuhhuh...cuz it's funny."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to happy coincidences. Sadly, with John Lewis’s passing there are no speakers from this milestone in American history still living. So it’s bittersweet to note that 58 years ago tomorrow, on August 28, 1963, an intimate gathering of 200,000 people watched as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech (watch it here) from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:
August 28, 1963
And 13 years ago tomorrow night Barack Obama echoed the words of King (among them: "The fierce urgency of now") when he spoke to a packed stadium in Denver as the first African-American presidential nominee in the history of the universe:
...or this size.
This for me is still King's money quote, the distilled essence of what it means to pursue a "more perfect union":
Or as modern-day Trump cultists, formerly known as Republicans, call it: a nightmare.
Have a great weekend. And Gulf states, we’re all hoping for the best. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Continued...
You are now below the fold, aka the 10th Circle of Hell. But since we’re talking about a traffic circle in Hell, Michigan, you should be fine as long as you don’t eat the salmon mousse.
Preach it, Ru. And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 27, 2021
Note: Cheers and Jeers will be closing briefly at noon tomorrow so we can explode a small-"ish" nuclear device in the kiddie pool with the hope of making the algae go away. If you have errands to do in a neighboring county, that would be a good time to do them. Don’t forget your mask. —Mgt.
-
By the Numbers:
15 days!!!
Weeks 'til the start of the Labor Day Weekend: 1
Days 'til the Hampton Beach Seafood Festival in New Hampshire: 15
Factor by which unvaccinated people are more likely to end up in the hospital with Covid-19 than vaccinated people: 29x
Percent of all eligible people age 12 and older in Maine who, as of Wednesday, had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine: 80%
Percent of Democratic and Republican Floridians, respectively, polled by Quinnipiac University who believe "climate change is going to have a significant negative effect on Florida in my lifetime": 83%, 17%
Support and opposition, respectively, for the Democratic $3.5 trillion New Deal II bill now working its way through Congress, according to Suffolk University/USA Today polling: 52%, 39%
Number of days before an earthquake happens that a snake can sense it from 75 miles away: 5
-
Hurricane Ida Timing
More maps at the National Hurricane Center here.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Been awhile since we featured a fresh pic of C&J's rescue lab-mix Haley (who turns 9 in a few months), so here she is cooling off in the wilds of Portland this week…
-
JEERS to silly comparisons. Yes, the terrorist attack on the Kabul airport was awful. We haven't seen something like that since it happened every damn day in the half a dozen years immediately following George W. Bush's invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and we were all told to ignore them, go shopping, and slap a bigger "Support The Troops" magnet on the back of our Hummers. So, yeah, sadly we lost some of our remaining troops who are facilitating the largest and most dangerous human airlift in recorded history. But c'mon, NBC News…this is just dumb:
Yeah, thanks, reporter. But there were not more troops killed in Afghanistan yesterday than all of 2002 combined, 2003 combined, 2004 combined, 2005 combined, 2006 combined, 2007 combined, 2008 combined, 2009 combined, 2010 combined, 2011 combined, 2012 combined, 2013 combined, 2014 combined, 2015 combined, 2017 combined, 2018 combined, and 2019 combined. So maybe stop with the stupid, pointless comparisons and go do something more useful. Like shopping?
CHEERS to order in the courts. It brings me no small pleasure to announce that it was a very bad week for the Trump cult. Not only did the House's bipartisan January 6th committee demand a slew of documents related to the attempted coup that could prove to be damning and enlightening in equal measure, but the courts were also busy throwing the book at some of his skuzziest lieutenants. In no particular order…
» U.S. District Judge Linda Parker of Michigan took lawyers Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and other members of the so-called "kraken" legal team behind the woodshed for "historic and profound abuse of the judicial process" in the wake of their ridiculous, lie-filled lawsuits claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Judge parker’s ruling also means they’re now more vulnerable to disbarment by individual states.
The jails sure are busy processing admission papers for the cultists these days.
» Remember last year's plot by a group of Michigan goobers to kidnap and assassinate Governor Gretchen Whitmer because she dared to use science to deal with the Covid pandemic? Only one of them pled guilty, and he was just sentenced to 75 months behind bars. He says he's real sorry, wants to de-program himself from the cult, and then help others see the error of their red-hatted ways. I’ll believe it when I see it.
» I'll never understand how the members of the Proud Boys terrorist organization get to continue roaming wherever they want, proudly displaying their colors and their hate. But at least their leader will be off the streets for five months. Henry Schicklgruber (I assume that's his last name) was sentenced to five months behind bars for burning a BLM banner and possession of a high-capacity firearm magazine. His parents must be so...proud.
» Thanks to a unanimous ruling by the FCC (and they never rule unanimously), disinformation slingers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman owe $5.1 million in fines for running an illegal robocall scam that targeted Black voters in several states. They also still face criminal charges in multiple states. Their goose is cooked.
And in Pennsylvania a lady cultist just got sentenced to a year in prison for yelling in a supermarket that she had Covid and then spitting on produce. Now if we could just nab the previous president for shitting on America.
CHEERS to the Arm-Twister-in-Chief. Happy 113th birthday to #36, Lyndon Baines Johnson. What a schizophrenic presidency—stellar marks for civil rights and the Great Society programs, but total fail for the quagmire in Southeast Asia. In fact, his tumultuous time at the top overshadows his dozen years in the Senate, where his personality and leadership style were encapsulated at the 1958 Gridiron Dinner by fellow Senator John F. Kennedy:
"I dreamed about 1960 myself the other night and I told [Sens.] Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it in the cloakroom yesterday.
LBJ settin’ a spell with JFK.
I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said, 'John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United States.'
Stuart Symington said, 'That's strange, Jack, because I too had a similar dream last night in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States and Outer Space.'
Lyndon Johnson said, 'That's very interesting, gentlemen, because I too had a similar dream last night and I don't remember anointing either of you.'"
—From One-Night Stands with American History by Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger
As his press secretary George Reedy wrote: "Of all his qualities...the most important was that he knew how to make our form of government work. That is an art that has been lost since his passing and we are suffering heavily as a result." Sadly, I also don’t think we'll see another president excel like LBJ did at the art of ordering Haggar slacks from the Oval Office with extra room "down where your nuts hang." Time marches on.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold...Titusville tea. My, how time flies when you're polluting the planet. 162 years ago today, in 1859, "Colonel" Edwin Drake's newfangled drilling technique (ramming a pipe in the ground so the hole wouldn't clog) paid off when his employee, "Uncle Billy" Smith, struck oil 69 feet down in a spot near Titusville, Pennsylvania. And a few years later solar and wind power completely replaced it as the world's primary energy source and everyone lived happily ever after with tons of sex, booze, fistfuls of thousand-dollar bills, universal health care and — [POOF!!!] — well, that was a fun dream while it lasted.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here are some of the TV highlights for the weekend. Oops, I guess I should've checked first before I wrote that, because there are no TV highlights for the weekend. Well, that's not entirely true, I guess. You can check out the new home videos here at Rotten Tomatoes. The baseball schedule is here and the WNBA schedule is here. The Little League World Series wraps up tomorrow and Sunday afternoon on ABC. If you missed the 60 Minutes report on all the UFOs that keep coming down to try and sell us term life insurance and vacuum cleaners, you can catch an encore Sunday evening. Other than that, we recommend you shut everything off and go find a comfy hammock. Now here's your Sunday morning lineup, such that it is:
Meet the Press: TBA
The pundit discussion is going to be intense Sunday morning on Face the Kittens.
CNN's State of the Union: TBA
Face the Nation: U.S. Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon; Sen. Lindsey Graham (CULT-SC); former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb;
This Week: Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Gayle Tzemach; Sen. Ben Sasse (CULT-NE).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Mitch McConnell.
Happy viewing!
-
Ten years ago in C&J: August 27, 2011
CHEERS to an appropriate response. Glenn Beck traveled to Jerusalem to thank the Jewish residents there for being so happy to sacrifice themselves during the upcoming Rapture (now definitively scheduled to happen in October, according to that old guy who definitively predicted it would happen last May) so that Christians could be saved. Beck predicted that his "Let's Spend the Shabbat Together" tour would bring out "tens of thousands" of people. Funny thing, though—apparently the Israelis have something called "a life," which doesn’t seem to involve watching a third-rate cable TV doomsayer prance around on stage honking his bamboozle horn. And so, though his estimate will no doubt number in the millions, the inconvenient truth is that Beck bombed again. Not only were the crowds much smaller than predicted, but they were made up, according to the Israeli press, of "mostly American Christians." Why do I bring this up when there are so many real issues threatening our civilization? As a wise man once said: "Uhhh...huhhuhhuh...cuz it's funny."
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to happy coincidences. Sadly, with John Lewis’s passing there are no speakers from this milestone in American history still living. So it’s bittersweet to note that 58 years ago tomorrow, on August 28, 1963, an intimate gathering of 200,000 people watched as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech (watch it here) from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:
August 28, 1963
And 13 years ago tomorrow night Barack Obama echoed the words of King (among them: "The fierce urgency of now") when he spoke to a packed stadium in Denver as the first African-American presidential nominee in the history of the universe:
...or this size.
This for me is still King's money quote, the distilled essence of what it means to pursue a "more perfect union":
Or as modern-day Trump cultists, formerly known as Republicans, call it: a nightmare.
Have a great weekend. And Gulf states, we’re all hoping for the best. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-